mrs. singh inaction

my cousin amie just arrived in africa to teach english to children (and teachers) in tanzania. don't ask me what they're gonna use the english for in tanzania. she wrote home to describe her experience in africa after reading it, i was reminded of a very very important thing that everyone should be reminded of: AFRICA IS BIG.

get ready for a jag. here it comes. i have a map of the u.s. up in my office that my parents sent (from AAA. known as AA here. ever notice that "alcoholics anonymous" is just one letter from the "automobile association of america"?). after work bridget and ramona were looking at it with me and ramona remarked that the united states is big. yes it is. it's bigger than south africa by a significant factor but it's a lot smaller than the entire continent of africa. i know i'm stating the obvious but let's look at what might not be so obvious.

unlike the united states one doesn't hop in the car and take a road trip to north africa. south africa has an "interstate" road system but it hasn't been around for as long as the united states'. my road trip with gavin where we covered something like 7 or 8 states in 10 days (ski trip included) highlighted the fact that the u.s. road system is one of american cold-war philosophy; be able to get anywhere in a hurry in the event of commie invasion. two lane and four lane roads will get you anywhere you want and if you have a navigator with a map, you can cut corners saving scores of miles on a trip.

on the other hand, south africa's national road system is still growing but is well behind demand. perhaps partially because of a lack of anticipation of the majority of the population ever owning vehicles. many people can point to the national roads (two to three lanes each direction) and point to a winding one lane each direction road and talk about getting stuck behind a long-haul trucker going 60kph and being unable to pass the whole trip. so it's improving (that's what i'm doing for a living here) but this is just south africa and bear in mind that south africa is the most developed country in the whole southern half and one the most, if not the most, including the top of the continent. so what you get here, isn't the standard. federal tax revenue from california can potentially fund projects in montana. do you think south africa is throwing money at problems in sudan?

so back to the thesis of this retarded jag... south africa is not only a hell of a lot bigger than the country of the united states, but it's not an interconnected network of roads, governments and economies. amie wrote in her email about the travel time that it required to get to her destination. small planes, small roads, unreliable vehicles... you name an ingredient that would cause slow travel and you'll find it when you try to visit an "off-the-beaten-path" destination in africa. anyone that's taken a road trip in a road-hugging, tight-suspension honda s2000 knows that the u.s. caters to off-the-beaten-path travelers with well paved roads. leave the sports cars at home if you want to see south africa.

next on the list of not-so-obvious things about africa is that, due to its size, africa has as much diversity in its landscapes as the united states. i'm finally taking the time to write about this subject because it's become glaringly obvious and, to be honest, a little frustrating. i honestly do wish that it were easier to go adventurin'. i haven't walked through any jungle where i thought i might see tarzan swing by yet.

the source of this concern is that i'm beginning to look at the country through the eyes of any of you who might come visit in 2010 for the world cup. the prefix "south" in "south africa" does belong. it truly is a modifier to its noun africa. some parts are so different from mainstream perceptions of africa that they even resemble parts of the united states. the differences are subtle to vacationers but become clear the longer you stay here.

point in case being this last weekend. snow fell only 30 to 60 minutes from here. just days later (and days before) it was shorts weather. warm winds and blue skies. it fell at the beginning of the week and i was determined to blow the minds of all the americans reading this blog by posting a picture of me making a snow angel (in july) a week after walking on the beachfront in durban. the picture to the left (if you click on it) shows a teensie bit of snow in the mountains. three months ago maritzburg was in a heat wave and only one month ago i was running the air con to keep cool in my office.

the snow fell all over eastern south africa at elevations reached just outside town. by saturday (our days are very short right now) much of the snow had melted but i was hell-bent to get to the snow. but there was a problem. joelene and i broke up thursday and she had been serving as my brains for the past two months (if you're more interested in the drama of my dating life than the drama of south africa versus the united states, i'll go into a little more detail of the breakup in about one paragraph). so i was without a navigator. the result was me just pointing my car at the snow and driving. i hit dirt roads that would result in dead ends and never managed to get there. i wrapped up the day by grabbing a cheddar sausage and roll at a little family-run restaurant called "gunther's" in the midlands. i was again the only patron and again alone so gunther and his wife and i talked. he moved here from germany to get away from his military education and worked in transportation for awhile but eventually just settled in the midlands and bought an amazing piece of property and turned it into a restaurant.

i apologized for eating slowly and keeping them from closing up shop but i guess they live there so no biggie eh? gunther said he was taught to analyze potential employees based on how they eat. i asked what a slow eater such as myself meant and he said it meant i was "full of sorrow". here i was thinking i chewed and talked too much. it made me sad to realize how sad i ate.

maybe i should smoke some marijuana to lose my sorrow cuz i eat faster when i'm high.

so for those of you following my dating life in africa, here's the whole enchilada. i should start at the beginning because that's where the end started. our first couple of dates were great but, if you remember, a text-message mix up led to both of us thinking the other person wasn't interested. as you may know, i shrugged and reluctantly moved on and started gaylene. when joelene contacted me i told her that i had moved on and regretted doing so but wasn't the type of guy to just break up with gaylene the day after 'getting serious' with her because someone else came into the picture. so ten days later, i broke up with gaylene because joelene might have been back in the picture. crazy part was that naturally joelene had accumulated a list of admirers and, just like i had, had contacted them about getting serious. get ready for a little culture shock or whatever... while i had been having awkward and unsatisfying sex with my next in line, joelene had been proposed to by hers. man #2 had offered up a marriage of convenience that she didn't have to decide on until her birthday at the end of june. that was two months off at the time. add to the ticking of that clock a biological clock ticking like the one in the croc's stomach in neverland, joelene was seriously ready to settle down.

for selfish reasons, i wanted joelene all to myself. like i said, i knew she could serve as my tour guide and brains. that and if you've seen pictures of her you'll know another reason i wanted to spend time with her. when joelene and i got "serious", by which i mean keeping a toothbrush at her place, this put a strain on phone calls from man #2 (not to mention her other admirers) who was calling to say "hi" and check in. after less than a week she came clean and broke off the engagement. the bloke took it well. i expected profanity but the guy was upstanding.

again, i was with joelene for selfish reasons. i knew she was what i was looking for while i was in south africa but joelene wanted something i couldn't give her which was a serious serious commitment and if i were to give it to her i was under the gun to match this other guy's offer. i was never the type to rush into a commitment and after get burned by shannon in the marriage, i'm really making sure i move slowly and cautiously. in the beginning joelene wondered aloud quite often why we were together if we weren't going to stay together. i asked her to give me three months of not taking it day by day but just letting down her hair and enjoying the moment. a relationship with an expiration date is always lucky to make it that long and naturally last week we fell one month shy of our three month re-evaluation period.

what doomed us was pretty simple. joelene expected me to be perfect and when i wasn't it caused serious problems. to be fair to her, joelene lived up to her own standards of perfection. the only problem she had was that she really let every little mistake i made get to her. the break up came after a great night with one misunderstanding that was allowed to ruin the whole thing. it came two days before her birthday... remember that's when man #2 was to come visit (he never changed his plans) to hear her response. for all i know, she said said "yes" and they're getting married sometime in the next six months or less. i felt bad for keeping her to myself while we were together and potentially keeping her from true happiness but now i feel even worse. not because i think she's making a mistake but because the whole thing is holding up a mirror to myself. i failed to make a snow angel and today rhona (a coworker that i introduced to her and is now bosom buddies with her) showed me pictures of mrs. singh playing in the snow...

another kick in the gut came when grant told me that tickets to the big horse race in durban this weekend that i've been looking forward to since i got here is sold out. joelene bought two tickets but odds are i'm not getting one anymore. oh well. the feeling of loneliness is just magnified by losing the closest thing i had to a friend so far. i pity the next person to come along that i'll have to latch onto to see the sights.

on a related subject, tomorrow is virgilio's last day at bcp's maritzburg office before he ships off to richard's bay, about 2 to 3 hours up the coast from here. he'll be closer to his home country of mozambiqe.

ten points if you read all this. we'll chalk this entry up to catharsis rather than trying to serve as informative.